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Childe felt his vision grow hazy as the pain from their fight finally started to overtake his senses. His hand trembled as he tried to stand up, only to no avail. No, this wasn't supposed to happen! What went wrong? Just yesterday the two of them were happily chatting away, discussing about future plans! How? Why? Why would his beloved do such a thing? How could he do it?
"Don't ever return to liyue, Childe."
Those words cut through his heart harder than when he fell into the abyss. Those words were the last thing that Childe would ever imagine leaving his beloved's mouth. Those words were something that Childe wished he had never ever heard at all.
When he first heard that sentence spilling from his lovely xian sheng's lips, Childe simply laughed him off, taking him for a joke. But when he saw that the elegant and refined man stood up and left him behind at their usual table at Third Round Knockout with no indication to follow him, he started to grow wary.
"Why?" Childe repeatedly asked that question only for zhongli to ignore him as if he weren't there at all.
"Was it something I did?" No response.
Childe was visibly panicking as his lover seemed to grow more and more agitated by the second. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Zhongli responded with a simple sentence of "We just aren't meant to be."
Childe was flabbergasted. What? Was Zhongli serious right now? Childe couldn't control himself and laughs started to spill from his mouth. So that was fucking it? A stupid "we aren't meant to be"? Childe couldn't help but laugh. Oh, so this was a joke after all!
"Xian sheng! You're an amazing joker! You nearly had me, you know?" Childe giggled as he used his partner as a support to prevent him from falling over.
However, his relief was short-lived as Zhongli shook his head and stepped away from the foreign man who was now getting to his senses. "Childe, I am being serious. We can't be together, you know that."
The now calm Childe frowned. "What do you mean we can't be together? No one is stopping us from being together! If we love each other, it's more than enough to-"
"I never really loved you in the first place."
Childe felt his heart shatter. His eyes widened as he felt his blood run cold. Was this another prank? Haha! Of course, it must be! But why was Zhongli looking at him like that? Why was he looking at him like he was some worthless being not worthy of even breathing? Why...?
Childe got onto his knees as he hugged the long legs of his now ex-boyfriend. No, Childe couldn't accept this. If he has to get down on his knees and beg to show Zhongli how much he loved him, he would. And that's what he did. Childe did exactly that. But it wasn't enough. Maybe it even irked the ex-archon even more. To the extent where he had to use brute force to show the desperate harbinger how serious he was.
And boy, was it a brutal fight. Blood was smeared, bones were broken, tears were shed. And they all belonged to a certain ginger! Meanwhile, zhongli was as stoic as ever throughout the duration of the entire fight. It was truly a sight to laugh at. It was as if the both of them were never in a relationship in the first place. I mean, to be honest, if they were both truly in love and in a loving relationship, why would they be even fighting each other to the death hm?
Childe was broken, both emotionally and physically. This was the most painful and exhausting fight that he has ever been put through and the Snezhnayan man wasn't sure if he could ever go back to being normal after this. It was like, falling into the abyss but two, no, a hundred times worse. And as if to add salt to the wound, the man behind all of his pain repeated the dreaded sentence for a final time.
"Don't ever return to liyue, Childe."
Oh, he most definitely wouldn't. Not after he was nearly beaten to death and had his heart smashed into a million pieces. Or maybe he would. Maybe he would come back to burn this place to the ground for all the hurt and pain it had brought him. Who knows? Only time will tell.